Don’t Let Social Media Take Over Your Life!

QC tutor Regina Osgood is the owner and creative director of Meant2Be events, a top Arizona wedding planning firm that manages over 250 weddings a year.

A lot of the event industry is about your image: how you dress, your marketing, who you are connected with, as well as the events you produce. One of the easiest ways to convey that image is through social media. Social media efforts are a major part of connecting with the millennial population, which currently is the biggest wedding market. Millennials want to connect with you personally as well as professionally.

There are so many outlets, so many changes, and so many rules to social media. It’s hard to not let it consume you. But running an effective business and maintaining a personal life need to be honored when considering your time spent on social media. Here are a few of my tips to conveying your message without letting social media take over your time.

Schedule your time for management

And I mean actually put it on your calendar to do social media once, twice, three times a week (or whatever you decide). As an appointment, you can manage the time you dedicate to posts and how frequently you want to post. This could also include time to skim and interact with other users’ posts so that you can maintain your relationships.

Schedule time for education

Probably one of the best things we do for our efforts is to take time each month to educate ourselves on what has changed or what others have found effective. There are many blogs, videos and webinars to assist you.

Find tools to assist you

There are programs like Hoot Suite that can assist you in cross posting to programs. I personally don’t use them, but a lot of people find them helpful. Most social media outlets, like Instagram, allow you to cross post directly to Twitter and Facebook. However, these outlets have different formats that don’t always make your content as effective across platforms.

We do use a program to determine the best times to post for our audiences. There are also tools that will allow you to schedule a post so you can create many posts at a time and release them periodically.

Vary your posts

If you post similar pictures or content, your followers will get bored and stop following. So keep it interesting and vary your content. You want the time you spend to actually assist your business image.

Choose your outlets wisely and take on what you can

It’s really smart to learn how to effectively use a program first before diversifying your efforts. This means becoming an “expert” in Facebook before taking on Instagram, for example. If you are fumbling around between sites, your time is wasted. Also, if you are posting to many sites infrequently then you are not using any site effectively.

Regardless of your plan of attack, set rules and boundaries for yourself. The only person who can enforce them is you, so if you don’t have a “plan of attack” then you won’t have the guidelines you need to make the most of your time.

Wondering what to post on social media? Take a look at our brand new Workshop to learn more about how to boost your digital marketing strategy!